Russell McOrmond

The site below hasn't been kept as up-to-date as I would have liked. If you want to know what I am currently engaged in, the following sites are more current (Sorted in order of how frequently updated).

My major interest is to do my part to move economics out of the industrial
era and into a post-industrial information/services economy.

This primarily involves the rejection of ideas as a new form of property
that is manufactured, bought, sold, rented, or licensed in the same way
that traditional forms of property have been during the industrial era.

Note to lawyers: While "Intellectual Property" may be the correct
legal term, and lawyers may know the proper meaning of the term, the
layperson does not. Lobbyists for a very narrow way of looking at works
of the mind have been abusing this confusion to suggest that copyright,
patents, etc are something that they are not. The "theft is theft"
rhetoric is part of this deliberate misleading of the public.

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps
it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the
possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of
it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less,
because every other possesses the whole of it.

Corollary: The "content industries", such as the motion picture and
recording industries, are not legitimate stakeholders in the discussion of
what features should or should not exist in my personal computer or VCR,
any more than they are a legitimate stakeholder in the production of my
corrective eye-glasses. If a member of a content industry doesn't like the
technology that exists in a given market sector, be it consumer
electronics in the home or personal computers, they can simply not offer
their products/services into that market.

Thoughts on the importance of balance in copyright law

While I worry more these days about the over-protection of copyright under
the control of intermediaries, I often need to remind people that I
strongly support copyright law as a way to protect creators' rights. I
often express it this way:

The protection afforded in copyright is to the creator as water is to
humans; too little and you dehydrate and die, too much and you drown and
die. Survival requires understanding this delicate balance.

Thoughts on the importance of governance software to be
democratic/free/libre software

Once you begin to think of 'code as law' (See:
Code and other laws of
Cyberspace), you quickly begin to question why governance software is
not yet afforded the same public scrutiny (access to information
requirements, accountability, public input, etc) as any other public
policy. A piece of software that implements public policy should no
longer be considered less important than an act of parliament or
regulation that implements public policy.

Governance software that controls Information and Communications
Technology (ICT), automates government policy, or electronically counts
votes, should not be thought of as something that should be bought any
more than politicians should be thought of something that should be
bought.

I feel that the rights and responsibilities offered by Free Software should be thought of as being much
more critical for any implementation of a modern free society than has
been understood in the past.

Information process patents

I am a firm believer that patent policy should apply as a temporary market
monopoly that regulates only the manufacturing sector. The economic analysis
that justifies this policy seems to apply to the manipulation of nature
toward the manufacture of a tangible product (a process to manufacture
something physical). I do not believe that patent policy should ever be
applies outside of the manufacturing sector to regulate hobbyists, nor should
it ever apply to the creation of intangibles.

Information processes such as software or business models should not be
thought of as being manufactured any more than consent should be thought of
as something manufactured. We should not believe that manufacturing
consent, software manufacturing or business model manufacturing is the
only option, so these information processes should not be thought of as
patentable inventions.